Works

Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,
And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:
- 'Twas not so in that August full-rayed, fine
When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.
...

Dark, drear, and drizzly, with vapor grizzly,
The day goes dully unto its close;
Its wet robe smutches each thing it touches,
Its fingers sully and wreck the rose.

Around the railing and garden-paling...

I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me,
Mile after mile out by the moorland way,
And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray
Into the lane, and round the corner tree;
...

Yes, Winchelsea (I tremble while I pen it),
Winehelsea's Earl hath cut the British Senate--
Hath said to England's Peers, in accent gruff,
"That for ye all"[snapping his fingers] and exit in a huff!
...

THE con-sci-en-tious art-ist tries
On-ly to draw what meets his eyes.
This is the Whale; he seems to be
A spout of wa-ter in the sea.
Now, Hux-ley from one bone could make...

A Whirl-Blast from behind the hill
Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound;
Then, all at once the air was still,
And showers of hailstones pattered round.
Where leafless oaks towered high above,...

While the king and his ministers keep such a pother,
And all about changing one whore for another,
Think I to myself, what need all this strife,
His majesty first had a whore of a wife,...

A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April - drip - drip - drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon...

Wod yo leead a happy life?
Aw can show yo ha, -
Get a true an lovin wife, -
(Yo may have one nah.)
If yo have, remember this,
Be a true man to her,
An whativver gooas amiss,...

"War ends, and he's returning
Early; yea,
The evening next to-morrow's!" -
- This I say
To her, whom I suspiciously survey,

Holding my husband's letter
To her view. -...

This is the story a man told me
Of his life's one day of dreamery.

A woman came into his room
Between the dawn and the creeping day:
She was the years-wed wife from whom...

(December, 1899)



I - THE TRAGEDY

She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper...

Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,
Where the tall liquor-cups foam;
I on the pavement up here by the Bow,
Wait, wait, to steady him home.

Will and his partner are treading a tune,...

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,'so lone
Clouds are not lonelier,'the forest lay
In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:...

Not very many years ago the writer was for some months stationed at
South Bend, a thriving little city of northern Indiana, its main
population on the one side of the St. Joseph river, but quite a...

Although we cannot turn the fervent fit
Of sin, we must strive 'gainst the stream of it;
And howsoe'er we have the conquest miss'd,
'Tis for our glory that we did resist.

O what a miracle wind is this
Has crossed the English land to-day
With an unprecedented kiss,
And wonderfully found a way!

Unsmirched incredibly and clean,
Between the towns and factories,...

A wink from Hesper, falling
Fast in the wintry sky,
Comes through the even blue,
Dear, like a word from you . . .
Is it good-bye?

Across the miles between us
I send you sigh for sigh....

Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters...

A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.

It lifts existence on a plane of snow...